[This book review appearedin the Journal of Social, Political and
Economic Studies, Fall 2000, pp. 372-3.]

American Academia and the Survival of
Marxist Ideas

Dario Fernandez-Morera

Praeger Publishers, 1996

This is a scholarly book that offers a valuable critique of several of the
central tenets of Marxist thought, and especially of the denial of the
realities of Marxist practice that has been common among those who have
continued to cling to Marxism since the demise of the Soviet Union. As such, it
is a worthy addition to the literature on Marxism.

Fernandez-Morera, an associate professor of comparative literature and
Hispanic studies at Northwestern University, also deals most particularly with
what he considers to be at the heart of Marxist theory: its epistemology, in
which all concepts are seen relativistically as arising out of class conflict.
The book offers many examples of this sort of thinking, which has come to be
manifested so pervasively within deconstructionism, Critical Theory,
multiculturalism (where it is applied to ethnicity rather than to class), and
much feminist writing. Fernandez-Morera's critique of this relativism is from a
classical liberal, Austrian School of Economics perspective, with many
references to the ideas of such thinkers as Mises, Hayek, Bastiat and Menger.
He doesn't refer to the Methodenstreit, but his critique could be
considered a continuation, in effect, of the great argument over methodology
that raged in the late nineteenth century between the Austrian School and the
German Historical School.

This reviewer does have important reservations about the book, although they
don't negate the strengths I have just mentioned:

1. It seems a shame that Fernandez-Morera didn't make the book an occasion
to explore the many subtleties that bear on the subject of
"relativism." The subject deserves to be carried into much greater
depth than past discussions have taken it, since there is so much to say about
when relativism is appropriate and when it is not.

There is a propensity among the successive generations of the Austrian
School simply to repeat the same "truisms" without further extension
or elaboration. Since other bodies of thought have during the past century
taken on considerable nuance, even though they are not nearly as sound as the
Austrian School is on most things, the result is that the ideas come across as
over-simplifications. The School's ideas were accordingly easily brushed aside
during the decades that free market thinking was very much a minority
intellectual position; and now that support for a global market economy is
ascendant, the over-simplifications take on an even more damaging role, locking
classical liberalism into a circular ideology that no longer allows itself to
look afresh at the imperatives of a free society.

2. Fernandez-Morera focuses on certain Marxist arguments, but makes no
attempt to grapple with other concepts that are equally central to Marxism,
such as its "theory of exploitation" (today continued as
"victimization") and the "labor theory of value." An author
isn't obliged to explore more than he chooses to discuss, but readers will want
to note the limits.

3. The title suggests that this is a book about today's academic Marxism. It
is not, however, the place to look for a detailed review of the contemporary
scene in either American or European university life. It tells us nothing, for
example, about what one will confront at a meeting, say, of the Midwest
Sociological Society or of the Modern Language Association. Fernandez-Morera's
discussion isn't empirical about today's academic Marxism, but is based on
ratiocination about certain important Marxist perspectives. The book is
valuable for what it is, but not for what its title suggests.